This paper presents a model of wage-employment determination in private and public sectors, which allows us to analyze the effects of different institutional arrangements on labor market equilibria. In particular, it focuses on how different degrees of coordination in decision processes affect hiring and wage setting outcomes. Cooperation in unions' behavior results in wage increases and employment reduction in the private sector, whereas it induces wage moderation and employment expansion in the public sector. Not surprisingly, if public decision units do not fully internalize the aggregate budget constraint in their hiring processes, the public sector wage bill and the level of taxation increase, thus enhancing the crowding out effect on private employment. Such effect appears to be stronger in the presence of encompassing union behavior. An empirical analysis performed on a sample of OECD countries in the period 1960-2000 seems to support the main predictions of the model.
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Paper provided by CESifo GmbH in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 1085.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Joshua L. Schwarz, 1987.
"Public Sector Labor Markets,"
NBER Working Papers
1179, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Ehrenberg, Ronald G. & Schwarz, Joshua L., 1987.
"Public-sector labor markets,"
Handbook of Labor Economics,
in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 1219-1260
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)